BEAT
by Kokura
Summary: He can hear the heart, close to his, beating... BY KORYU OF AIIKSTUKO


A/N: This is actually from my brother Koryu, who is too lazy to get a account. NO, he is not a copycat writer - it just so happens that all members of AIIKSTUKO periodically write in each others' styles, and therefore share many similar qualities in our writing.

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**BEAT **

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_- BeAt -_  
  
He (the oni-eating tengu, who one day will answer to a human not even one-tenth of his age and power) is strong, so very strong, and knows it. The other, inferior (_weak, pathetic_) youkai flee from his presence, fearful of making a tiny mis-step that might incur his awesome wrath, and, if they must remain, bow and scrape and grovel and then run away at the first possible opportunity, and he revels in it, bathes himself in their absolute terror and drinks down the power that it gives him, the complete domination over the squeaking, puling _things_. The screams they make as he devours them, scrap by scrap, piece by piece, blood and gore and pulverised flesh running down his chin and staining his teeth, are absolutely delicious, and whet his appetite, so that he eats one after another after another, and then all of their friends with them, all while they scream and squeak and shriek in agony and he laughslaughslaughs because it's just so DAMN funny. 

**_- bEaT -_ **

He was imprisoned, a very long while ago _(even for one such as him)_, then set free, not _quite _as long ago, but still a few hundred years past, by a white-haired young man with red, red eyes. He remembers him, even now, because of the colors. Red, red, red for blood and death and sin and _power_, yes, the power he loves and yearns for and snatches with his black-clawed hands, and white for flesh and life and innocence and, above all, _weakness_, the weakness he despised in the youkai that fled, even as he laughed and laughed and glutted himself on their fear and desperation. He remembers, and as he does, he smiles _(it is not a happy smile)_ at the contradiction, and the way it suited the man so well, he who was snow-white and rose-red, he whose name the oni-eater can no longer quite remember, except for the vaguest sliver of thought of a little fox-girl crying, "Kantarou, Kantarou!". And he does not stop in his musing to wonder why he has memories of her as well, and why they are not of him ripping her apart while she screamsandscreamsandscreams when she is so clearly weaker than he is, and why he remembers a feeling of _possessiveness_ that overcame him every time he thought of his carmine-blanche master. He is not sure that he _wants_ to know why, and so he doesn't spend too much time on it before fading back into the dark-blue-grey-black shadows of the large, luxury apartment building where he thinks a house once was, a house that he remembers with the sound of laughter and shouting, and with the images of the kitsune-girl and weiss-rouge boy, and leaves. 

**_- BEat -  
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**It has been two years since his master died, and the oni-eater _(harukaharukaharuka, something whispers, sibilant, in a tiny recess of his heart)_ sits on the cherry tree by the irritating man's grave, buried in the traditional Western style with an enormous black marble headstone carved so intricately and gilded so much that it borders on the edge of tastelessness, with two fat, naked children with wings on either side holding vases with fresh lilies that Youko had, only that morning _(only every morning)_, placed in them. The monument had been given to them as payment from the young, wealthy couple whose request's fulfillment had brought about the untimely death of his master (his Kantarou, _his, his, HIS_, though death bar the way, always _HIS_) and Youko and hewhosenamewasonceHaruka were not happy _(originally, the oni-eater had been less peeved because he thought that the winged children were (rather insulting) representions of him, carved so he could watch over his master even in death, but then Youko had told him that they were Christians' angels, and he had had to be stopped from smashing the thing in a fit of rage that anyone could be so insulting as to insinuate that he was not worthy of guarding his master)_, but did not want to run the risk of insulting such influential people, and so, with fake smiles and plastic shows of gratitude, marked their master's sad grave with the tasteless monstrosity. Once-Haruka now jumps down from his branch and looks at the grave and its despicable marker, closes his eyes in a moment of silent prayer, and flies off, silent, with one white lily tucked in his tuxedo's jacket pocket, the same tuxedo he had worn to the funeral and that he has not changed since.

_**- beAT - **_

Kantarou lies, almost-still, with Haruka next to him, and Haruka marvels at how quietly Kantarou sleeps when he is with him - at the almost ludicrous contrast between his sleeping and waking states - and, half-mockingly, holds a hand over the part of Kantarou's lips to see if he is still alive, though part of him shudders at the thought that he might feel nothing, no brush of air...but he worries for naught, because the warm rush against his palm reassures him that his annoying master is still alive to pester him, which he will undoubtably do tomorrow, Haruka knows. So he lies with his head on the headrest not more than two inches away from Kantarou's, and enjoys, for once, the sight of his master in peace. He can hear the heart, close to his, beating... 

**Buh-bmp **

Buh-bmp

Buh-bmp

...it goes, and hearing it, Haruka is lulled to sleep in the knowledge that all is right in the world for now, and, whatever may come tomorrow, today has happened, and today was good**. **

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BEAT 

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